Do men profit from marriage?

The second depressing article I read this evening was a long LinkedIn post under the heading "LES HOMMES NE PROFITENT PAS DU MARIAGE" ["Men don't profit from marriage"]. The English translation runs like this,

MEN DON'T PROFIT FROM MARRIAGE

1. He's 70 years old.

2. He has retired from active work.

3. He worked all his life to raise his children.

4. He has deprived himself of the pleasures of life to pay for expensive school fees and living expenses for his children.

5. They are now well-off in Europe, Australia, America, etc.

6. His wife, 62 years old, moved to live with their children.

7. He stays alone at home.

8. His children hardly call him.

9. He must start the single life again.

10. He fights high blood pressure and other ailments related to old age.

11. How long will he survive alone?

12. This is the reality for most monogamous working-class men: their old age is often lonely and, in many cases, sad.

13. No matter how good the man is, women tend to love their children more than their husbands. The older he gets, the less they seem to serve him.

14. So, what do men really benefit from marriage?

15. They sacrifice so much but receive little recognition for their hard work, while the woman seems to reap all the benefits.

It's a man's world, they said, but it's really for women and children. Dear men, this could be your situation over the next few decades. What are you doing about it? What is your retirement plan?

Take care of yourself as much as your family. Love yourself.

Learn or perish.

Again, really depressing—not least because there are elements in the description that could apply to me and to my life.

When I compare this post with the article I just mentioned immediately below, the differences are obvious. But part of what strikes me are the similarities. At any rate, it seems that the cheerleaders for divorce (in the previous article) and the author of this post recognize some of the same basic goods in life. 

The pro-divorce partisans think divorced women are empowered because they can take charge of their own lives; Dr. Kenlack thinks that women and children are privileged because they can leave Africa to forge new lives in "Europe, Australia, America, etc." The perspective is different, but both celebrate self-determination. 

The pro-divorce partisans celebrate a good alimony settlement so that the woman has extra money to spend on herself; Dr. Kenlack laments that the man is mistreated because all his money has gone to others. Again, the perspective is different, but both focus on money.

In fairness, one place they differ is in the comparative value of solitude ("freedom") or togetherness.

Now, I'm not trying to say that self-determination or money are bad things. And certainly it would feel terrible to work hard all your life and then be abandoned in poverty at the end. But so long as we are not talking about actual poverty, I have to ask, What else would you rather have spent your money on, if not your children? 

A nice house? It's just that more to dust and keep tidy. 

Elegant meals? Mostly you won't remember them. 

Vacations? Again, they are gone in short order, and mostly forgotten as well. 

Your children, by contrast, stand a good chance of outlasting you (though nothing is certain). And the money you spend on their education or their subsistence goes into building the adults that they grow into. They won't remember every franc, but the expenditures will have a cumulative effect, like tiles in a mosaic, or leaves that fall in a forest and return nutrients to the soil. What could be better than that?

Besides, if there is anything to the idea that we come back in future lives, and that our future state depends on how well we performed in this one, then surely there should be some long-term benefit to fulfilling our responsibilities faithfully here and now. And even if the discipline simply trains us to be better men than we were before, surely that's a profit of some kind.

I don't want to minimize the difficulty and disappointment faced by the men that Dr. Kenlack writes about. But I have to think there's more to the picture. 

Of course, maybe I think that just because I'm afraid one day it will be me.